The feeling of being watched was gone now, imaginary or not and Sara decided it was time to leave. Maybe she would hit the fashion stores on the way out. If someone was following her, they’d have to make their move now.As she made her way to the checkout counter, she purposely went over to the area where the couple had been standing, hoping to get another glimpse of the hot guy.She checked down a couple of aisles, but he was nowhere to be seen, so she headed to checkout.The clerk, a decent looking young man with a shock of short blond hair, so blond it was almost white, worked the register. He was at least five years her junior and gave her a plastic smile at the counter as she paid for her magazine.
Leaving the store, she followed the aroma of grease and freshly baked pretzels. She decided against the pretzels and settled for a much needed caramel latte, smothered with whip cream. Setting the magazine aside next to her newly purchased coffee, she glanced around once more to see if anyone was paying her any notice. Satisfied no one was, she fished for the journal she always carried from her bag. She flipped through several pages, to finish where she had left off.
Maybe the answer lay within those pages and she needed to find it.A week had already passed and she only had a few days left until her next session with Mr. Therapy. This time it was about losing her innocence or at least what wasn’t lost already.She started skimming over her entries and found her place right after Cardboard Hill.
Later that day, the two older neighbor boys were spotted walking towards us. We all stopped dead in our tracks. The reputation of these boys was intimidating to us since they were older boys who knew all about sex. None of us knew their names, but we referred to them as the Snider boys. They approached and quickly struck up a conversation with the younger boys in our group, and soon the conversation went from small talk to topics that were very dirty: sex.
Most of us were only in the 5th grade with a couple in the 6th grade, but pre-puberty, for sure.And I’m positive it had been years since any of these boys had seen their mother naked, but I was betting they had already experienced the joys of morning wood a time of two. The Snider boys went on to tell all these glorious stories to make themselves seem like experienced lovers which captivated their audiences for a couple of hours until the stories started to become redundant.
We hung on every detail, how too French kiss with girls by sticking their tongues in their mouths, and how they would ‘go all the way’ with their dates. Now to us, going all the way actually meant going somewhere, like to the mall with the girls. It sounded cool but we had no clue what that term really meant.Looking back, these boys were probably in the 8th grade but to us they were so mature.
We sat in a circle as we listened and we got our first lesson about sex, or at least what we thought sex was. They told us all that happened was that the guy puts his shaft in the girl’s hole, and that’s it. The visual picture was just this, without all of the heavy breathing and heavy petting that we now know takes place in the real dance of sex. Over the years this visual haunted me - more because I couldn’t rationalize how that was possible.
But now, having experienced great sex with Michael, nothing compares in my book.Hours passed as we sat around these boys, crossed-legged listening to the erotic stories. It was so cool, but yet so wrong because I kept waiting for my parents to walk up behind me, even though I knew it would never happen. Both of my parents would stay in the house, doing who-knows-what but never come out looking for my sister and me.
They smoked and drank and probably indulged in marijuana or the sandwich bag of green 'potpourri' that I found in my mom's bathroom drawer.No wonder she locked herself in the bathroom so much.
After that day, I was never the same person for two reasons: the spider, and the lesson about sex. Both my ears and my mind were scarred and my innocence lost forever. Several years later one of those boys would rape me.
She put the journal down.Her hands were shaking. Oh yeah, the rape. She had almost forgotten about that. How was that even possible? Michael didn’t know about that incident because she felt it might change their relationship for the worse. She was glad the trauma she suffered hadn't impacted her ability to be intimate with a man; her therapist told her some women suffered that many years after the violation and the violence. But instead, it had the opposite effect on her.
I know exactly what I want, she convinced herself, I can tell Michael what I want so he can pleasure me.To keep her sanity, she didn't let the rape interfere with her current sex life. So if she could manage not to associate those two together, then why couldn't she do the same with other areas in her life?
“What are you afraid of?”
Reluctantly, she decided to keep reading even though the more she read, the more she became frustrated and confused.Her cell phone began to vibrate in her pocket. She happily pulled it out and checked the caller ID. It was Jackie.
“What are you doing?”She asked.
“Just reading at the mall,”Sara answered.”
“You’re reading your journals again, aren’t you?”The silence to her question must have given Sara away. “Come on.You know you can’t keep doing that to yourself.It’s torture! Come out with me tonight.We’ll have a girl’s night out.No boys allowed. We haven’t done that in a long time.”Silence again on her end. “Come on. I won't take no for an answer. I’m picking you up by seven.”
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